Michael Egan (author)

Michael Egan (born 1941) was Scholar in Residence at Brigham Young University, Hawai’i and Professor of English and Political Science at TransPacific Hawaii College, Honolulu. (which ceased teaching at the end of 2008). He earned his Ph.D at Cambridge University, where he edited The Cambridge Review and was first Contributing Literary Editor for the Times Higher Education Supplement.

Thomas of Woodstock attribution

Egan's most recent book is the variorum edition of The First Part of the Tragedy of King Richard the Second: A Newly Authenticated Play by William Shakespeare, with an introduction, notes and critical commentary (Edwin Mellen Press, 2006). which won the 2006 Adele Mellen Prize granted by the publisher. Egan's thesis that Shakespeare wrote the play, also known as Thomas of Woodstock, was examined by three independent Shakespeare scholars, who unanimously agreed that "In sum, the differences, stylistic and otherwise, between Woodstock and Shakespeare's un-doubted plays, even his early ones, so vastly outweigh the perceived similarities as to compel the conclusion that Shakespeare did not write Woodstock."

Publications

Egan is the author of more than 80 professional articles and ten books, including:

• Henrik Ibsen: The Critical Heritage (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972, Taylor & Francis, 2000)
• Extreme Situations: Literature and Crisis from the Great War to the Atom Bomb (Macmillan, 1979) [with David Craig]
• Huckleberry Finn: Race, Class and Society (Sussex University Press, 1977)
• Henry James: The Ibsen Years (Vision Press, 1972)